Socializing Holly

It's early Saturday morning, and Nick's taken Holly to the park. A fellow dog owner told him that if you go to Forest Park before 9 you can let dogs off leash in a large fenced-in part of the park. She needs socialization, our Holly, so that she can learn to play well with others. Right now her social skills are limited to skittishness and barking. She also needs endless exercise, just because she's a Jack Russell and therefore has limitless energy -- she's like an overwound top who literally vibrates with intensity. He just texted that there are about two dozen dogs and she's having the time of her life.

Today should be the first day since the surgery that approaches normalcy. We'll do errands, and I'll go along for the ride. And even though the list of chores includes nothing more exciting than food shopping, dry cleaners and drug store it's a big deal for me (I'll no doubt need a couple of naps just to recover from the glory.)

Last night was -- in Olivia's words -- Wendy's big night out. We went to my parents for Rosh Hashana; Matt came in from Amherst and Liv brought Jon. Great dinner, lovely evening and in these particular times a milestone for me. I made it through dinner and was able to stay for two full hours before I got too tired. It was great having everyone together in the same time in the same place (though the kids didn't talk and the only exchanges between them had to do with passing food from one to the other.)

I'm going back to work on Monday, and hoping to make it through an entire day, though we'll see. I was supposed to call the doc Friday for clearance, but forgot.

Some things in the news that puzzle me:

• Why would someone spend $63,000 to have dinner with Sarah Palin?
• Why did the conservative right have to turn out to be right about Acorn?
• Did Jimmy Carter's comments do more harm than good?
• How can David Brooks believe that the great divide and vitriol we're seeing is sourced from populism and not race?
• Did the House resolution on Joe Wilson help make him a martyr and was there an alternative?
  
• Can health care reform be salvaged?
• Will Michele Obama's efforts help advance health insurance reform?
  
• How many seats will the Democrats lose in the midterm elections?
• Can anyone mobilize kids to vote in those elections?
• Which Republican seats are at risk?

Re-emergence

I'm coming out of it. Finally, today, Thursday, I feel more like myself. I've got the pain but I actually welcome it -- I can feel it sharply, intensely, the way it really feels, not distorted through a haze of drugs and withdrawal symptoms. The nausea remains, though lessened, but the crippling headache and disorientation are gone. I'll sleep a lot today, but less than I have been.

Coffee tastes good again, for the first time in about a week. I'm not craving the usual gallons I drink in the early morning, just a cup or so, but it's a start. I think after another day or so of rest I'll be ready to re-enter the world. I'll need to call the doc tomorrow and get cleared to go back to work, and the continued swelling notwithstanding that's exactly what I'm planning.

We managed to get a couple of kid things done this week, somehow. We got Olivia out of her ill-fated US History class and into a regular global class. She's acting as though a great weight was lifted, and seems excited about her upcoming English reading (I'm excited: Othello, Brave New World, and I've strongly encouraged her to actually read these books and not to rely on Spark Notes.) Also looks like we've secured an SAT tutor for her. His name is Wesley, he taught Liv's best friend and they'll start a week from Sunday. Let's hope the genetic inheritance of poor-test-taking ends before her.

Matt's coming home for the weekend, which is great. All he needs to feel at home at school is to meet some people and make some friends, but he's resisting all of the traditional ways to do that.

Nick had jury duty yesterday and managed to get out of it not just for this week but for 6 years. It wasn't his connections to law enforcement that liberated him, but the fact that he's a sole proprietor. Either way, he's free, and relieved (though he admitted that the 3-week criminal trial they were recruiting jurors for sounded interesting; it would have been incredibly disruptive and stressful for him to have served.)

Another crisis averted.

So we'll have a quiet few days coming up, and with luck they'll be the last few quiet days for a while. Starting next week it's time for my next "re" -- now that I've re-emerged and began to re-enter it's time to re-engage, and just get back to full participation in my own life. I miss work and the complications it entails, the ups and downs, the intractable problems easily solved, the teams to work with and help improve. I'm looking forward to next week.

Our social life can get back on track too, and we can soon start to see our friends again. And Nick can offload so many of the responsibilities he's had to take on during my helplessness. I want to share the chores again.

I'll be able to turn off the damn TV except for selected programming; not having it on as a running tap as I have the last few days since these drugs kicked in and robbed my focus and attention span.

So after today I'm looking forward to a better weekend, to a return to consciousness and clarity, to Scrabble and mojitos, to being able to sit upright for a 1/2 hour without needing a rest after, to taking care of some errands (no one can really do my drug store shopping but me, and I'm running out of many things), to starting to switch out my clothes for the new season, to hanging out with Nick and with the kids, to spending far less time in bed, to pulling my weight and doing my share.

Clean and Sober

I've made a decision: I'm stopping the drugs. Nick and I talked about it (when I even had the energy to talk) and we agreed that any relief I'm getting from this potent but evil combination of meds isn't worth the side effects. I haven't even had the energy to write in two days, let alone anything else. Since Sunday I've done almost nothing but lay in bed, and I haven't even been able to manage phone calls. The drugs drain my energy, break my spirit, and suppress my appetite. Even the doc said when we spoke yesterday that all they're meant to do is give me a little relief while my body does the real work, which is dissolving the blood clots under the skin. I've decided that I trust my body more. So effective a few hours ago, I'm getting clean (and sober: wine's off limits, at least until all this poison is out of my system.)

I'll go cold turkey. I'd rather feel the pain but at least feel like myself.

I haven't really been able to read since Sunday; that was when the drugs started to kick in. Before that, though, I finished the Battle for America book -- I highly recommend it. I've received two books as gifts, both very thoughtful (one is the new Doctorow, the other is the Senator Kennedy memoir.) Maybe tomorrow as my system flushes out the meds I'll have the attention span to start one. Inability to focus is actually one of the listed side effects of one of the drugs (don't remember which one; reviewing the side effects for both was like a "can you top this?" exercise -- one scarier than the last.)

More updates tomorrow when I'm actually able to start making things happen, instead of either passively letting them happen or even being completely unaware that they are happening. I'm more hopeful than I've been in a few days (that's a drug side effect too -- mood changes.)

I want my body back, I want my mind back, and I want my spirit back. And that's what's going to happen next.

The Lethargarians

My Saturday reminds me of a scene from "The Phantom Tollbooth", when Milo meets the Lethargarians and they tell him how they spend their time.

"Well, if you can't laugh or think, what can you do?" asked Milo."Anything as long as it's nothing, and everything as long as it isn't anything," explained another. "There's lots to do; we have a very busy schedule"At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend."From 8 to 9 daydreaming."From g to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap."From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay."From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap."From 11:00 to 12: 00 we bide our time and then eat lunch."From 1:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter."From 2: 00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap."From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today."From 3:30 to 4: 00 we take our early late afternoon nap."From 4: 00 to 5: 00 we loaf and lounge until dinner."From 6: 00 to 7: 00 we dillydally."From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time."As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done.""You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo."We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help.""You see," continued another in a more conciliatory tone, "it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?""I might as well," thought Milo; "that's where I seem to be going anyway."

That was Saturday. It must be the new pills, because not only did I spend most of the day in bed (as I'm meant to -- when you take away sitting and standing that's pretty much all that remains), it was all I really felt like doing. I plowed through the book, which I love, though I'm coming to the end and I'm not ready to finish it. So I'm making it last by reading other things along the way -- mostly food magazines and a couple of news and political weeklies. For some reason this pattern -- making the book last longer, stretching it out -- reminds me of Hamburger Helper. Must be the economy, but I'm seeing their commercials for the first time in a long time.

When I read I tend to keep the TV on with the volume very low, and I watched the President's healthcare rally in Minneapolis. When the coverage was over I discovered a strangely compelling show on MTV: "World's Strictest Parents." I don't know if the show is new or old, popular or not, but something about it drew me in and I watched a few episodes where truly difficult and intractable kids were sent away for a week to stay with families whose home lives are characterized by structure and discipline. There's a heavy dose of religion in the families who take in the teens, at least in the 2 episodes I've seen, which is unsurprising and makes the culture clash even starker.

We played a few games, but not until late in the day. Nick did a lot of work in the morning and took care of shopping in the afternoon, then we both did the de rigeur cleaning before our potential buyers arrived at 6:30. Very nice Chinese couple, asked the right questions, but we'll see.

Today is even less ambitious than yesterday. We've got people coming at noon but that's it. All the errands and cleaning are done. The day lies ahead, pretty much uninterrupted ("Let us go then you and I, while the night is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherised upon a table." - TS Eliot.)

I've been up a while; the pain woke me at about 4 and I couldn't get back to sleep. I stayed in bed as long as I could -- til about 5 -- then got out quietly so as not to wake Nick (though needless to say I managed to wake Holly.) I returned emails from friends (thanks Wendy, Thomas, Sara, Sarah, and while I'm on the subject thanks for your cards and calls and emails Gena, Lamia, Ellen, Pam, work people and family.) Holly's now been barking for a half-hour, but Nick is still in bed, though he'll be up any second.

While we're on the subject of Holly, she is a source of endless amusement. Last night Nick dropped -- and she retrieved -- a cherry tomato, which she played with for what seemed like a half hour. She rolled it, held it in her mouth, spit it out whole, stalked it, and chased it. She treated it the same way she treats a large ant or a cricket -- she torments her prey before she devours it. The tomato didn't put out too much resistance. She's a paper tiger anyway -- brave and bold inside her corral in the yard or inside the house; timid and terrified when she's on the leash. Afraid not only of other dogs but her newest phobia is a tipped-over trash can. Nick thinks it must look to her like an enormous open mouth. That would explain it (though I'm not sure he can come up with the creative reasoning to explain the rest of her new-found fears.)

Yesterday at the doc

We trudged through the rain yesterday afternoon to see the ortho for our accelerated appointment; he'd moved it up because of concerns about what I was feeling -- pain, aching, numbness. When we saw him he said I'd scared him with my symptoms, and he and Kim examined both me and the MRI. What they found was a lot of swelling, both visible at the incision site and more so inside via the MRI. That swelling is apparently pressing on the nerves, which would explain my weird nerve-related symptoms.

He said these will subside on their own, but could take a month. A month! And he swapped out the meds. Goodbye Percoset. Goodbye Flexoril. Hello Ultram. Hello Lyrica. Scary drugs, according to the package labels. Scary drugs, according to the pharmacist who insisted that she speak to me before filling the prescriptions, as she made sure that I was no longer taking the old drugs before I started the new ones. One is an anti-epileptic, which got our attention. One of them -- I don't remember which -- says that thoughts of suicide are a possibility. I remember Lyrica from my last job when I was working on Eli Lilly's Cymbalta; Lyrica was identified as a chief competitor when Cymbalta received its new indication. It's a very different thing to work with these drugs in the abstract than it is to have them prescribed for you. A clash of the abstract and the concrete, the theoretical and the actual.

He also thought my plans to return to work early next week were a pipe dream. He was visibly surprised when I asked about returning -- "not yet!" and asked if I needed a note. What we did agree on is that I'd like to start coming in for a few hours mid to late next week, but that I need to check in with him early next week first.

Apparently I now have the dread complications, though they're not serious. It also means that I need to do even less than I've been doing -- less sitting, more resting, no bending, no twisting. No kidding. More bed time, more lying down and the occasional short walk. And that's all that's available to me.

So the weekend will be very very quiet. We have 3 groups coming to see the house which will require at least some cleaning and straightening, but I know Nick won't let me do any real heavy lifting. So I'm working at my level -- just picking up what I can without breaching any of the forbidden activities. It means I can empty the top shelf of the dishwasher but not the bottom, and I can clean off the coffee table in the living room as long as I'm sitting but not standing. As an old boss of mine used to say, champions adjust.

Otherwise I'll read. I'm halfway through the Balz/Haynes book -- completed the section on the Democrats, moving on today to the Republicans. We'll wallow today in the weird news that characterizes 9/12: Glen Beck's insane astroturf movement, the tea parties, the continuing hand-wringing over Joe Wilson and the erosion of civility.

We'll try a lying-down version of Scrabble, and see how that goes. I'm glad it's raining today; it'll make it easier to live within my current limitations, which feel boundless.

tired but triumphant -- we arrive in Charlottetown

New photos -- thanks, Pam